A Cloud Isn’t Enough: Why Additional Backup Is Necessary

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A look at why businesses need more than a cloud to backup their information.

Regardless of the size of your business, regularly backing up your system is essential to keeping your company’s network secure. Doing so helps keep your information clean and safe regardless of the security practices you utilize to combat hackers or keep your information safe in the event of an unforeseen circumstance. Thankfully, we’re going to discuss some of the incredibly important reasons as to why additional backup is necessary for your business.

Forgetting to Backup Can Be Incredibly Costly

Backup systems are essentially insurance policies for your business, meaning that the loss of one network can have the devastating financial effect on your business. With data loss taking up at least 1.7 trillion in business downtime, the damage can quickly close a business if unprepared. For example: A small breach infecting less than 100 files can cost a business anywhere between 18,000 and 35,000 dollars to fix. Unless your business has that kind of money lying around, backing up your data will

Even small security breaches impacting a limited number of files, which many small businesses suffer from, can have a significant impact. A report from Verizon found that small breaches, which involve the loss of fewer than 100 files, can cost your business between $18,120 and $35,730. Unless you have that kind of money to throw at a preventable problem regularly, then it’s time to implement an effective backup strategy.

Ransomware Can Strike at Any Time

Another trend that is growing across the world is the spread of ransomware. Once you’re hit with ransomware malware, your entire network is encrypted. At that point, you’re locked out of your own network until you pay a ransom to hackers, usually with a crypto-currency like Bitcoin.

Don’t assume that your small business might fall under the radar from this type of attack. In fact, Oklahoma has been targeted with a variety of ransomware attacks. A Time Magazine’s story on ransomware begins with a ransomware attack on a law firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Due to their lack of security, small businesses are often the prime targets for ransomware attackers. With a secure backup of your system, you can help avoid paying the ransom and just restore your data before you were infected with ransomware.

Without Backups, Natural Disasters Could Put You Out of Business

Statistics from FEMA indicate that 40 percent of companies fail to open after suffering a natural disaster and additional 25 percent fail within a year. The United States Small Business Administration also finds that a whopping 90 percent of businesses fail two years after suffering a disaster. Part of the problem has to do with failure to back up data, leaving companies starting from scratch following a catastrophe.

Unfortunately, many companies still don’t perform proper backups. For example, one study found that 60 percent of small businesses don’t back up daily and many don’t perform backups at all.

Regularly Back Up Information – Provide Peace of Mind

Backups help you rebuild your network regardless what happens. Otherwise, you can lose sensitive data like customer financial records, product information, payroll data, mailing lists and business plans. If a virus starts destroying your network, failure to restore your system from a clean backup can leave you with network outages that can last days or longer, destroying customer confidence in the process.

In some cases, it’s not a matter of hack attacks or malware, but simple data corruption. Backups help you go back in time before you experienced network issues and quickly restore your system.

It’s no exaggeration to say that even one incident of significant data loss can mean game over for your business. Backups ultimately allow you to focus your business efforts on what delivers value instead of always looking over your shoulder for a network security disaster. With cost-effective backup strategies available from professional managed IT service providers like Lynchpin Consulting, there is simply no reason your business should go without a regular backup policy.